Elemental Inspirations

Elemental Inspirations

Excerpt from "Guardians of the Telenanth"

Appendix D: The Tragedy of Draginol & The Arnor

Draginol the Mithrilar was not wholly ruined in the beginning. Unlike the other 4 Mithrilar, Draginol was not created in the beginning. He was once mortal and like all mortal men, he sensed the passage of time which, ultimately, would be his undoing.

Where Draginol came from and who he was is covered elsewhere. What is relevant is that for a long while, he found himself alone. The other Mithrilar had no concept or understanding of a physical form. They existed as spirits and did not view time and space in the same way a mortal man would.

In time, Draginol came to understand the Telenanth. This immense crystaline object was the source of all energy in the universe. As the tool of creation, it was the ultimate source of power and Draginol came to yearn for the ability to control that power such that he could order things as he saw fit.

With the Telenanth, Draginol created the Arnor. As powerful as the Telenanth and Draginol were, however, creating a form of life was beyond Draginol’s capability, even with the Telenanth. The Arnor were and still are, merely mechanism that are aspects of Draginol himself.

During the creation of the Arnor, Draginol strove to make them truly alive. It was only after nearly a hundred had been made that he came to understand that he could not truly create lives but merely mechanism that were reflections of himself. As a result, Draginol changed his objective from creating life for the sake of life to creating tools that would do his bidding in help order the universe to his liking. To that end, Draginol created a legion of other Arnor without putting in the time and effort he had put in to the first 5 score of them.

This distinction in how the Arnor were made led to a rift between the two groups. The first group, like Draginol, sensed the passage of time and were filled with a need to right the wrongs of the universe. The second group, unlike Draginol, did not sense the passage of time and were far more passive and malleable to strong leaders.

However, there were a few Arnor that existed in the transition between the two groups. Like the first, they were filled with a need to right the wrongs of the universe. But, like the second, they did not sense a passage of time. Of this transitionary group the best known is Tandis the Arnor.

For a time, it was good. The mightiest of the Arnor, the first group, led the second group to building a great civilization. As with Draginol, however, time was their enemy. The passage of time on a mortal consciousness is a great destroyer.

Eventually, the need to do right led to the need to control. They knew that other life would be appearing in the universe relatively soon but had no way to leave their world. Because they were immortal in body but mortal in mind, they lacked the capability of growing in mind indefinitely. They reached a peak of understanding and could never grow beyond that. As a result, the Arnor were slow to develop technology, to leave their world.

But these Arnor did understand the power of energy very well. The dark energy (what some might call “magic”) that resided in themselves they harnessed extremely well. With enough of it, they could build a device that would let them travel anywhere.

With the only source of this energy being the Arnor themselves, the mightiest of the Arnor began to subjugate their weaker brethren. This caused the irrevocable split between the two groups of Arnor with the former becoming the Dread Lords and their minions, the Dread Knights.

In time, the Dread Lords had nearly wiped out all of the other Arnor in an effort to take their life force and place it into an orb-like object that would contain enough power to let the Dread Lords do virtually anything they wanted.

But the Dread Lords were ultimately defeated. Tandis the Arnor led the other Arnor in a last-ditch defense of their people but the ultimate downfall of the Dread Lords came from Draginol himself in the ultimate act of betrayal.

Draginol had used the Dread Lords to create the orb so that he could take possession of it when the time was right. His path of ruination had begun before the Dread Lords had been created and thus had fallen far further than the Dread Lords had in their rationalization of using other sentient beings for their own ends.

The Dread Lords would bide their time and rise again once sentient beings began to take shape and would scatter across the universe. That tale, however, is told elsewhere.

You claim inspirations in the title. Is this intended to be backstory for Elemental - which would then imply a universe connection to GalCiv - or simply something which gave encouragement for that game?

Praise be the Frogboy for giving us this post. I'm going to assume that we will get more background info about past times of the world inside old dungeons and places like that, right? At least in the campaign? It would be a very nice touch.

If I get my way, the campaign will be a lot richer, in terms of story, than what we've done in the past.

before? Wouldn't that mean they are now dead and blown up with the cataclysm? Or do you mean the channelers and the starting towns were born before the cataclysm? I mean, obviously the towns and heroes will have people born afterwords right?

Him being able to sense the passage of time led him to his fall, since the ability to sense the passage of time results in him focusing on the future more than the past and present. A good analogy would be this:

Suppose the whole of space and time is like your computer screen. Now, in the model, each pixel represents a point in time.

If you were to sense the passage of time and thus try to order it to your wishes, it would be chaotic as you moved from one point in time to the next, with an overall sense of purpose, but without an overall harmony, leaving the last few pixels perfect to your designs perhaps, but the rest as jumbled chaos. You would always be living in the present 'pixel' and thinking about the outcome on future 'pixels.'

If one did not sense the passage of time, they would see the entire picture on the screen. If they were to alter it then, they would be able to perceive the overall harmony of the picture being displayed.

Thus, in trying to make the future 'pixels' perfect, you would mar the overall picture.

I have a question though... If the Arnor were only aspects or mechanisms which emulate Draginoth, where does that dark energy come from, the Telenath? And if so, wouldn't it be easier for him to just draw the energy from the Telenath into the orb directly? Or were the two incompatible and thus needed an intermediary device?

I like to think that Elemental world is Altaria planet in galciv universe, where Draginol and dreadlords make the altarians... maybe in another time /dimension. Maybe the cataclysm wipe out the altarian and a new cycle begin on that planet or more propable, it is a cycle in the arnor-dread lord war way before the altarian.

"It doesn’t help that Altarians also flaunt their unique, native ability to manipulate cosmic energy."

- Galciv 3 altarian civilization description

it maybe refer to magic

I don't know, maybe i'm wrong, but the fact that dread lords provoke the cataclysm let me think that the Elemental planet is part of our galaxy in the galciv universe but not at the same time. If not why Dread lords are part of the story?